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John T. F., Mac Druid

Category: Mac

Satisfied Customers: 2586

Experience: 20+ years in the computer/Mac industry

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I have an older PowerMac G5 (June 2004) running Leopard (10.5.2)

Resolved Question:

I have an older PowerMac G5 (June 2004) running Leopard (10.5.2) that will no longer boot. I bought it from someone else and do not have the OS discs. When I hit the power button it will go as far as the grey Apple screen and the progress indicator will appear. That's it. After a minute or so, the fans begin to race and I have to force shut down the machine. Any ideas?

Since you do not have the orignal discs, we will have to be creative a bit. If my first answer does not resolve your problem do not rate yet. Use "Reply to Expert" button instead.

Restart the Mac

As soon as you hear the startup chime, press and hold the following keys;

COMMAND, OPTION, P, R

Hold them until you hear the chime a second time and then release the keys and allow the Mac to boot normally.

Does it boot to desktop as you would hope? If not, reply back.

If you still have concerns, please do not negatively rate my answer, simply reply back before rating. I'll be more than happy to work with you further. Hopefully, this info will answer your question. When you are satisfied, please give my answers a positive rating. You are judging my personal service only (not this website or your issue) and high ratings assure I remain in good standing.

I did get to the desktop. I ran the Verify Disk routine in Disk utility and it checked out OK. I then ran the Repair Permissions routine and about 3 minutes into that, the screen went dark grey and a pop-up windo appeared that reads "You need to restart your computer. Hold donw the Power button for several seconds or presst the Restart button."

I was able to successfully run Repair Permissions and it was a pretty lengthy list. I do have a copy of Disc Warrior that I was thinking of running, but I can't remember how the start the Mac from the DW CD.

Right after I sent you that last reply, the Mac froze up again, and I am unable to reboot at all now. One time when I got to the gray Apple screen I saw the progress indicator appear for about a minute and then the Apple changed to a "O" with a diagonal line through it. I have been unable to restart, even with Command-Option PR. The fans continue to race.

OK, I was incorrect about the RAM. Been a while since I was inside this machine. I have 8 memory slots. The front four have 2 1GB DDR's and 2 128MB DDR. The back four have the same set of cards but are in the reverse order.

my gut feeling is this may be hardware related - either memory, mainboard or a physical issue with the hard drive. If you could reseat all the RAM, or even test a different configuration (inserting them in different slots than before, booting with less memory, etc...) that might narrow it down if it's memory related.

OK, I re-seated the RAM cards. I left them in the same order for now. I reconnected the machine and start up failed. I tried the file system checker and it failed. Booting up with Command-Option PR got me to the blue screen, but then the greyed out screen with the restart message came up. I think I'm dead in the water.

Were you able to boot up from the DW disc? If you can boot of the disc then that may point to a more physical issue with the hard drive, if the disc also locks up then it may point to memory or mainboard.

This is just getting wierder by the minute. I was unable to run DW and rebuild the directory because I have a newer version of Mac OS than the version compatible with DW. I did test the drive and it said it is functioning normally. I'm done. I'm going to pull the hard drive out and get it backed up and retire this tired old machine. It served me well. Thanks for your help, John.

I can't email the thread ( as we don't have access to customer emails) but you should actually be able to print it (to printer or PDF). There should be a "Share" button near the top of the page that has options for print, etc...

I will tell you that...the things you have to go through to be an Expert are quite rigorous.

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